Page 390 - THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

I’d be willing to stand a thousand such jokes to have you
here. Well, to think of that per- formance! I don’t deny it,
I was most putrified with astonishment when you give me
that smack.’

We had dinner out in that broad open passage be-
twixt the house and the kitchen; and there was things
enough on that table for seven families — and all hot, too;
none of your flabby, tough meat that’s laid in a cupboard
in a damp cellar all night and tastes like a hunk of old cold
cannibal in the morning. Uncle Silas he asked a pretty
long blessing over it, but it was worth it; and it didn’t cool
it a bit, neither, the way I’ve seen them kind of
interruptions do lots of times. There was a considerable
good deal of talk all the afternoon, and me and Tom was
on the lookout all the time; but it warn’t no use, they
didn’t happen to say nothing about any runaway nigger,
and we was afraid to try to work up to it. But at supper, at
night, one of the little boys says:
‘Pa, mayn’t Tom and Sid and me go to the show?’
‘No,’ says the old man, ‘I reckon there ain’t go- ing to
be any; and you couldn’t go if there was; be- cause the
runaway nigger told Burton and me all about that
scandalous show, and Burton said he would tell the

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